Reality

One of the central themes of all my writings – even the My Haunted Life series – is the nature of reality and the role that we may play in dictating that. Over the last twenty or so years (if not my entire life really), I have read, meditated on, studied and discussed this topic and the process I have come to several conclusions. One of these is that I now believe that much of our world is an illusion.

It’s easy to draw analogies with movies like the Matrix here and I and others often do but what I mean is a lot of what we think we know isn’t real. It isn’t truth nor fact. I once said (and thought it was rather cute) –

“The more I think on it the more I realize that certainty is an illusion. History was written by the winner, the news is provided with a spin and other people are opaque. We know nothing for certain. It used to be that the internet might provide information,but it too is now nothing but opinion and scare mongering. Nothing can be relied upon. We have to look inside ourselves for anything of value – anything that can be relied upon – but it too is colored by our ego and personalities.

So in the end, if the past is a colored view and the future a fancy, what do we have left?

Life is an enigma and I may never actually understand the answers but I do know this. Everything that we take to be true is probably not. Let me give a few examples;

1. History – history is written by the winner and it reflects a perception or view of what happened. There are alternative histories for everything and the sad thing is, they are all colored by the same issue.

2. Education – Education is partly about providing certain tools – reading, writing, critical thinking, analysis – but only in limited degree. The rest of education is essentially to ‘brainwash’ you with cultural normalities, cultural convention and to ensure you don’t actually challenge the system. Most people accept what they are told as the gospel truth and never for a minute stop to think critically or analytically about things. In this way, the illusion is maintained.

3. Religion – While all religions are probably based on wisdom and spiritual truth, they are all and without exception, subverted to match someone’s political or cultural agenda. They become the basis by which people can be manipulated and controlled.

4. On a more mundane level, the music or entertainment industry can be used to prove its all illusion too. Many singers can’t sing (they use computer software now to ensure perfect pitch), many musicians can’t actually play, many live performances are lip synched. It’s all a lie (It didn’t used to be). Actors and actresses public personas are creations and false often nothing like the reality. Show business is really all a show – an illusion – just like everything else in your life.

5. You are bombarded day in and day out with messages – some subliminal and others in your face – buy this, eat this its good for you, holiday here and so on. The marketing machine uses our ability to imagine and visualize – a rudimentary skill though it is in the majority of us) and uses OUR magic making ability and equipment to have us make THEIR reality. Our magic has been hijacked!

I could go on and on but I won’t. Don’t ask me who the THEY might be. I have no idea and I am not a conspiracy theorist – that’s just another fantastical dead end. That there is a THEY – whether THEY actually know it or not, I am sure.

I also have concluded this. Given everything turns out to be illusion and that I cannot trust anything, then I must turn to the only thing I can rely on – me. Unfortunately, I have to first clear the Me of all the nonsense I have been conditioned with and am bombarded with daily. As Mark Stavish terms it – I must know my own mind. This is far from easy and may not be attainable at all but I can make progress towards it and, in doing so, I can take control of my life and my reality. I can be a true mage and imagine my thoughts into reality. Of course, I also live in other people’s realities too and I must learn how to interact with their parallel universes too.

You know, if the outer world we call life is an illusion while the inner world is real then surely, the Kingdom of heaven truly is within us and faith – well, it can move mountains.

It doesn’t matter
Matter anymore
A life lived
An open door
No matter anymore
It doesn’t matter
Matter anymore
Such a stress
Bloody mess
It doesn’t matter
Matter anymore

So serious
What was that about?
So erroneous
I said that
No doubt
Life and death
It seemed so serious
A waking dream
Horrifically delirious

I thought it mattered
I really did
I thought I had to try
I really did
I thought I should be
Like so acute
Like dark glasses
Sideways cute
But now I know
I have just understood
And now I laugh
Like you knew I would

It doesn’t matter
Matter anymore
A life lived
An open door
No matter anymore
It doesn’t matter
Matter anymore
Such a stress
Bloody mess
It doesn’t matter
Matter anymore

In the run up to Halloween, here is another true and strange tale of the paranormal. I will post a new strange true story each day so don’t miss them.

A few weeks into my college days, as I made my way from the Students’ Union building to my student flat on the 19th floor of a campus building, I noticed a rather suspicious looking character who seemed to be following me around. As I entered one of the elevators in the ground-floor of the building, he followed peering sideways at me but looking away whenever I tried to catch his eye. As the elevator arrived at my floor, I was hoping it was all just my imagination and that perhaps he would continue up to the top floor above me. But, as I left the elevator, he followed and as I reached the doorway into the group of six study bedrooms, shared kitchen, and bath that was my home on campus, he was still right there – right behind me.

“Do you want something?” I asked nervously.

“Gary, I want to talk to you,” he said quietly.

“How do you know my name?” I asked in surprise.

“Oh, I know a lot about you.” he replied. “And I must speak with you – Now if possible.”

Reluctantly, I let him in to my study bedroom and he introduced himself as an Indonesian student. He practiced meditation, he said, and he had been asked by his Guide to talk to me and help with some challenges that I was facing. I was rather incredulous but convinced. How exactly did he know my name?

Anantha and I actually became firm friends from that point forward. He really did know a lot about me for someone I had just met and that seemed both mysterious and alluring. He tried to help me understand that I was a ‘sensitive’ and that this sensitivity meant that I was open to all the flotsam and jetsam of the astral world. He also told me that my uncontrolled reaction – pure fear – was attracting things from that realm that I was probably better off without. He started to teach me some psychic self defence methods that were useful but the problem was that at the smallest hint of any phenomenon, I became a total wreck and fear possessed me completely.

In order to help me overcome this deep-seated fear, he suggested that it might help if I could share a controlled experience with him. Sitting me down in a comfortable position, he asked me to close my eyes and relax. Peeking out of the corner of my eye I watched him do likewise. Suddenly, I was with him in a stone tunnel, it seemed to go on for a great distance and as it did so, it slowly curved around so that you could not see where the tunnel went. What I could see though, was the brightest light I have ever seen. It filled the tunnel with golden light but its source was always just around the bend in the tunnel so that it could not actually be seen directly. The light began to fill me with laughter. It made me feel very happy, happier than I had ever felt and happier than anyone has any right to feel. I began to laugh out loud and as I did so, tears of joy sprang from my closed eyes. As I laughed an odd thing happened. My laughter seemed to become magnified thousands of times and to descend in pitch until I realized that this was not my laughter anymore but someone or something else’s laughter. The laughter permeated throughout my entire being so that everything was laughter and golden light and I knew then that I was in the presence of God.

When I finally came out of the trance that I had found myself in, Anantha was already sitting opposite me with a smile on his face and a questioning look in his eyes.

“You see, He is always there for you,” he explained. “There is no need to be frightened. All you have to do is trust in Him.”

As I discovered on several occasions since then, a wonderful experience like that quickly fades just as the memory of a dream fades. At the time that it happens and shortly afterwards, it feels as if it should surely stay with you forever, but it fades just the same as consciousness returns to normality. And, with its fading away so too the newly found and almost grasped confidence went with it and as Anantha left, I was ashamed to feel just as frightened as I had been before.

Anantha did help me a lot though. Through slow perseverance he got me to a state that I could best describe as the toleration of fear. He was also someone that I could share my thoughts and experiences without fear of reproach or that look of horror as your confidant realizes that you might well be a total freak. Unfortunately, he left the college at the end of my first year returning to Indonesia and I never heard from him again.

If you enjoyed this story you will also enjoy my novel – The Last Observer – great price on Kindle all winter!

What is the definition of divide and conquer? A strategy for achieving political or military control (my italics).

There are a lot of ways to divide and conquer but the three that most easily come to mind are as follows;

1. Nationality
2. Religion
3. Race

Politicians use all three of these and many others on an almost daily basis to gain what they want for their personal power. They pit us against one another by playing to our sense of injustice. The us and them statements designed to obtain an emotional response because if we surely thought about what we are being said we would recognise it as BS it really is.

I’m English and a yorkshireman apparently. Why? Because by accident of birth I was born there. Nothing more. But, as I grew up I was constantly told how I should think and behave by those around me. It’s normal for that to be the case. I left though – Yorkshire at age 18 and England at age 28. I have not returned and now I see what utter bullshit I was told to think about being a yorkshireman and being English. I am also British, European but most importantly I am a human being and I poop and pee and worry about stuff just like the rest of you. We have in common much more than what divides us but those devious Divide et impera politicians do not want us to remember this. Oh no, for without division how could they achieve their vision?

Meditating, studying the esoteric and observing has told me that we create our own reality. So, to take a current debate as an example, if I am Scots I have been likely raised being told a bunch of BS about the English (or the protestants/catholics – if I am west coast Scots). I emotionally yearn for yesteryear when Scotland was a Kingdom in its own right free from southern control and when Mel Gibson covered in blue daub beat the crap of out them and even stole the King of Englands queen’s heart… oh wait, no that was a movie right? and historically that queen hadn’t been born before Gibson’s character met his death…. well, what does it matter, we’d be better off without them anyway. Stand back a minute and think about that. Being Scots is an accident of birth and then being programmed by the local society. As is being English. It’s all one big fairy story perpetrated to keep you angry, jealous and ready to fight people just like you.

I know some people are still trapped in that paradigm and will not get it. They adore being Scots, English, Russian, Ukrainian or whatever it is and they will argue and fight for their own – their clan. Fine. I won’t because it is bullshit and its anti-human.

We focus on what divides us don’t we as opposed to what unites us. To finish using the same current debate. If the Scots were determined to make the UK work, it would and they would be building a different reality to the one in which they want independence. We create our own reality – its that simple.

I don’t really have an axe to grind and whatever happens I wish the Scots and the English and the Welsh well but I do hope that one of these days people will wake up and realize they are being manipulated. They are allowing their reality to be created by someone else. So, when you get that reality that you ceded to someone else please, quit moaning.

I wonder if any of you have ever met a real magician? Someone capable of making physical magic via their will? Czech magician, Franz Bardon, was one person reputed to have developed such powers and I can recommend the autobiographical account of his life which was written by one of his close associates after his death here in Brno and admittedly goes a bit overboard in its claims. Nonetheless, he could make real magic of that I have no doubts. Despite hanging in magical circles for close to a decade or so, I have never seen or met anyone capable of performing that kind of magic. I have seen and participated in rituals that have had real power and had real results but I have never seen someone make it rain or make something burst into flames simply through an act of will. Do people like this exist? Yes, I am certain of it.

Someone who I have become fortunate enough to correspond with is a gentlemen by the name of Marten Crawford. Marten is also someone who admires Mr. Bardon and who has for many years followed Bardon’s exercises and helped with a Bardon discussion group on line. He and others had some interaction through this discussion group several years ago with a real adept magician who had followed Bardon’s exercises with real success. The interaction makes for remarkable reading and offers significant insights into what it takes to become an adept in real magic. The book is a must read for any aspiring magician. Here is its description…

Most of us know of gifted people: Van Gogh, Einstein, Bach, Hawking, mathematicians, faith healers, psychics and so on. But did you know other abilities are possible?

With spiritual training one can achieve abilities far beyond anything we can comprehend right now: with the right training.

Cast in the form of conversations, this book is about one such person, a gent who trained using spiritual exercises daily for 30 years, sometimes at great peril to his health, his family, his friends and his financial well–being.

After extraordinary effort, this Magician was capable of creating earthquakes, 360 degree vision and could even stop time itself. Impossible new–age claptrap?

“We are a thought created moment by moment containing all that is, was and ever shall be: the reflection within the reflection”

Set at the turn of the 21st century with the help of his sponsor, he not only made it to the first great transformation, to the second but on to the third great transformation where the ability to speak thought into being is conferred.

Astonishing, deceptive in it’s unassuming easy style, this book itself is a work of magic designed to bring transformation to the reader in a most subtle way, if one but follows the trail of breadcrumbs this magician left us…

“As like attracts like, when you begin to achieve positive results, you will find every part of your life changing. The uncommon becomes the familiar, what you never imagined could be, suddenly is all around you. And that is just the beginning”.

I recommend that you buy this book and look out for my in depth review in a weeks or so….

I looked down onto and across a very strange and unfamiliar landscape. It was a rocky, largely barren place with sharpened peaks rising all around. Yellows and grays beneath an azure sky. It was like looking into a vast ampitheater and I recall thinking that the heat of the midday sun must be unbearable down there in the center. Strange, because ‘down there’ was really up there on top of a flattened peak of dust and bare rocks. It was a strange and crazy point of vantage that I had of this scene. There were a number of squarish whitened buildings dotted around in the yellow-green valleys – signs of life at least.

It was then that I noticed that atop the flattened rocky peak in the center of my vision there were figures. From my position of vantage it seemed as if there may be a small crowd and three crosses. I recall idly wondering about the crosses until somehow I seemed to zoom in upon the scene as if to clarify what it was I was seeing. Sure enough, there were about 50 or so people gathered atop this cross between a mountain and a hill and three crosses. Each cross had a man upon it wracked in agony. The central cross was the one that drew my attention and that of the small crowd as a soldier thrust a spear into the man’s side. The crowd gasped and cheered.

For me, it all happened in a rush as if the entire world had snuck in on me in an almighty rush of energies, sound and light. I realized clearly and without doubt that the Nazarene was dying and as his head dropped and he gave a last breath there was a massive explosion of light and energy. Momentarily, it was suddenly as dark as night and then a small spark of light seemed to appear emanating from the Nazarene dead upon the cross and this light moved outwards in a massive concentric circle, expanding and expanding to encapsulate everything. Again, my vantage point shifted and now seemed seemed distant as I watched in sheer amazement at this concentric shower of light and energy that was spreading through every rock, tree, living creature – every single molecule and atom on the planet.

I hadn’t expected it but the concentric ring of ever expanding light seemed to hit me and I was knocked back as if hit by a nuclear blast. The light filled me up. It enlightened every atom of my body sitting there in my office chair in Houston, Texas. A powerful rush of energy like nothing I had experienced to that point and have not experienced again. The effect of this was to momentarily knock me out – I blacked out literally. But then I was back.

I was everything. Everything was me. We were all one thing in total harmony. The planet, the Universe, you. It was all me – us.

It lasted for an just instant and then the light was gone moving off into the Universe in a huge concentric circle.

But just for a moment, I had been fortunate to have the light of the Christ show me the Truth.

You can read an alternate account of this experience in my book Inner Journeys (Thoth, 2005)

For decades there have been rumors about a pedophile ring at the highest levels of British society. From time to time, bits and pieces would bubble up in newspapers and then just as quickly, the story was gone again. The story was always there though in the background as whispers, innuendo and rumor. It was a story picked over by conspiracy theorists who no doubt embellished it with lurid stories of satanism, black magic, lizards, aliens, murder, royalty and much much more. Indeed, much of this was truly stranger than fiction but throughout there was a core of substance to these stories. Since the Saville case came to light, the existence of such a pedophile ring involving powerful people and going to the core of British society has been proven. Increasingly, the papers and the media are covering the story and the conclusion has to be that the Britain we all know is a lie.

Everyone who knows me will appreciate, I don’t like conspiracy stories. In fact, I set out to disprove conspiracy and my view is that the logical explanation is always the most likely but that we will never know the truth of anything. Too much chaos and too much personal interpretation by everyone involved in anything to ever see the truth of a matter like this. Too many people willing to twist and embellish for personal gain or some other reason. Read The Prague Cemetery if you want to understand how it is done. An excellent book. But I digress. In this instance, there are too many independent pieces of evidence now to come to any other logical conclusion than there is a massive cover up around this group of powerful pedophiles in the UK and that this has been covered up for decades.

I come to this conclusion reluctantly because, like most people, I do not want to believe or accept it. But consider just a few of these items, do your own research and you will come to similar conclusions I am sure. The despicable Jimmy Saville and all of his friends and connections including his driver, Cyril Smith, Peter Morrison, the busting of a huge pedophile ring involving more than 6000 people across the UK, Norman Tebbit’s statement that there ‘probably was a cover up as we believed it was better to protect the system’. He now views that as a mistake. I am not going to name other names though yesterdays news did not surprise me as this man is rumored to be a part of the high-level pedophile ring that literally ran (runs) the country. Stars, politicians, aristocracy and one or two business leaders…..For such a story to never actually bust out another logical conclusion must be that the secret service and police at high-levels are also involved in the cover up.

I think its time this story was blown wide open. I think its time we knew the truth. I think we should demand to have this investigated out in the open and that no one – NO ONE is sacrosanct.

I have two additional thoughts around this topic. Firstly, back in the 70’s and 80’s, this sort of thing was endemic and pretty much kept quiet by everyone. It was a sort of open secret. For example, at my elementary school, there was a male teacher whose name I do not recall that we all avoided. It was well known that if you were a boy and you got hurt or distressed, this teachers favorite way to comfort you was to shove his hands down your pants and fondle you. All the other teachers knew, I think parents knew. No one did anything. I recall falling and grazing my knee at break one day. I was crying but as I saw this creep walking towards me I ran. I ran as fast as I could because I had seen what he did and he wasn’t going to do it to me. Don’t get me started about the scout masters I knew. Nice men but they too seemed to think that a good old fondle was the way to comfort a small boy. Don’t tell me it wasn’t common knowledge – I am sure most people knew and they looked the other way.

My second thought is probably whimsical and falls into the conspiracy area that I so detest but…. I am inclined to believe that people sell their souls for power. Whether accidentally or deliberately, there is no doubt that for wealth, power and influence, people will do things that are ‘evil’. In doing so, they sell their souls. Stranger than fiction?

Posts navigation

RSS Feed

About me

G. Michael Vasey is a Yorkshire man and rabid Tigers fan that has spent most of his adult life lost deep in Texas and more lately, in the Czech Republic. While lucky enough to write for a living as a leading analyst in the commodity trading and risk management industry, he surreptitiously writes strange poems and equally strange books and stories on the topics of metaphysics, the occult and the paranormal on the side, hoping that one-day, someone might actually buy them.
After growing up experiencing ghosts, poltergeist and other strange and scary experiences, he developed an interest in magic and the esoteric. These days he fancies himself as a bit of a mystic and a magician to boot. Most of his inspiration for his scribbling comes from either meditation or occasionally, very loud heavy metal music.
He has appeared on radio shows such as Everyday Connection and X Radio with Rob McConnell to tell strange and scary stories. He has also been featured in Chat - Its Fate magazine and interviewed by Ghost Village and Novel Ideas amongst others.
He blogs addictively at garymvasey.com and he tweets micro thoughts at @gmvasey. He also reviews a lot of very weird books at strangebookreviews.com.